Beaten Iraqi woman dies in California

LOS ANGELES — An Iraqi woman brutally beaten in her southern California home in an apparently racially-motivated attack has died in hospital, US media reported.

Shaima Alawadi, 32 and a mother of five, died after she had been taken off life support Saturday at a hospital in San Diego County, CNN television reported.

Alawadi had been on life support since Wednesday when her teenage daughter found her unconscious in the living room of their home, the report said.

“During the initial stages of this investigation, a threatening note was discovered very close to where the victim was found,” police Lieutenant Mark Coit told the network.

Alawadi’s daughter said the note told the family to go back to Iraq and called them “terrorists,” CNN noted.

“A week ago they left a letter saying, ‘This is our country, not yours, you terrorists,'” the daughter, Fatima Al Himidi told CNN affiliate KGTV. “So my mom ignored that, thinking (it was) kids playing around, pranking. And so the day they hurt her, they left it again and it said the same thing.”

The family reportedly came to the United States from Iraq in the mid-1990s.